


Forgiveness

by apicturewithasmile



Category: The Blacklist (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Don't worry there's a happy ending, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-11 01:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18420215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apicturewithasmile/pseuds/apicturewithasmile
Summary: After Red finds out that it was Liz who got him arrested and almost executed he struggles to make up his mind. Can he forgive her? If not, what's there to stay alive for anyway? In the meantime Liz isn't having a much better time either.





	Forgiveness

It’s been four weeks now. Four weeks since she told him who betrayed him. That it was her. Having been just a minute away from his own execution doesn’t even compare to the pain her confession has caused him. The worst thing about it was that he understood. He knew why she did what she did. He knew she never meant for things to escalate so far. He could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. She was as heartbroken as he was, if not more. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to forgive her. Why couldn’t he forgive her? Four weeks since he had last spoken to her. God, he missed her voice. Four weeks since he last saw her face. Tear stained cheeks, shivering lips, standing in front of him begging for forgiveness – or punishment. Anything to get a reaction out of him.

 

But he couldn’t forgive and didn’t want to punish. He just went away. As far away from her as possible. If he stuck around he’d have to deal with his own pain – and hers. He didn’t know how to do either of that. But running away, hiding, always on the lookout, never in the same bed twice – that was a scenario he knew how to manoeuvre, how to survive. Survive? For what though?

 

He had stopped taking his medication until Dembe noticed. The concern in his friend’s face was a burden too heavy to shoulder on top of everything else. So he went back on the drugs he’d been given to keep himself alive, even though he didn’t know if he still wanted that.

 

Four weeks of switching between nightmares and no sleep at all. Four weeks of being reckless both with himself and others. Four weeks breaking down. Four weeks without her. That’s all he could take. When he woke up this morning, after yet another too long day followed by too short a night, he picked up his phone and turned it on for the first time since he left. Thirty-seven missed calls, four text messages, one voice mail, all from her and all of them from the first week after he left.

 

The voice mail was from the last time she called, it was short but told him all he had to know.

 

“Red. It’s me. I just want you to know that... I’m waiting for you. I miss you, Raymond.”

 

He noticed her voice was breaking when she said his name. The name that wasn’t really his and yet it never felt more right than when she said it.

 

He listened to the voice mail again. And again. Then he called his pilot.

 

* * *

 

The expression on his face when she told him what she had done was haunting her in her sleep. Had she ever seen him so devastated? Had he looked at her with the same expression when she betrayed him the first time. When she made him believe she had died right there in front of him. She kept wondering what hurt him more? Killing herself to get away from him or almost killing him to get him away from her?

 

After he had gone she didn’t leave the apartment for days. The only thing she could bring herself to do was to try calling him, again and again, despite knowing his phone was switched off. She didn’t even know whether he still had it with him or thrown it away. She kept trying regardless. Until one day she stopped.

 

She might’ve had something else, something more violent, in mind when she told him he could punish her if that’s what he needed in order to forgive. But she was beginning to realise that it was the pain of missing him, the desire of wanting him back that was exactly the kind of punishment she deserved.

 

She gathered all her courage to call him one last time. Whether her message ever reached him she wouldn’t know. But it would be out there. Out there for him to hear if and when he chose to listen.

 

“Red. It’s me. I just want you to know that... I’m waiting for you. I miss you, Raymond.”

 

“I love you” she added, knowing full well she had already hung up.

 

* * *

 

 

The first thing she noticed when she got home was that her door was unlocked. She could’ve sworn she had locked it twice before going to the supermarket. Carefully she stepped into her apartment, holding on tightly to the bag of groceries in her arms. Her body was tense until she noticed his cologne lingering in the air, a moment of relief, then tense again as she saw his familiar silhouette standing by the living room window. Hat and coat still on. He might’ve just as well been wearing a full suit of armour to hide behind.

 

“Red.” She put the groceries down and took a few steps towards him, then froze half way. He was back in her life and that was either the best thing that could have happened to her or the worst. Was this absolution or a final goodbye?

 

“Did you get my message?” she asked.

 

He kept his back turned on her as he spoke, looking out the window as if the right words were to be found there in the distance somewhere. “Yes, I did. Elizabeth, there’s something I need to ask you. Something I need to be sure of before I say anything else.”

 

He took her silence as an invitation to ask away. “What you said to me before my execution…”

 

She breathed heavily, both anticipating and dreading the inevitable question.

 

“Did you mean it?” he asked.

 

She couldn’t bear talking to his back any longer and commanded her body to move closer. When she was only an arm’s length away from him, she touched his shoulder. He flinched under her touch but followed her non-verbal request and turned around to face her.

 

“I meant every word”, she said, letting her hand glide down from his shoulder along the length of his arm until she could hold his hand in hers. “And I still mean it. I love you.”

 

Again those three words pierced right through his chest just like the first time. He didn’t know how to respond so all he did was lightly squeezing her hand until suddenly her lips were pressed against his. After the initial shock had passed his instincts kicked in and he closed his eyes, opened his mouth so he could play with her tongue. One hand still in hers, he used the other one to caress her back and pull her closer against his body. It was like his first kiss all over again – less clumsy maybe, but equally as exciting.

 

“I love you” she whispered in his ear. “Please forgive me, Raymond.”

 

He opened his eyes and looked right into hers. “I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t already.”

 


End file.
